How ABG Is Transforming The Idea Of Business - Akshay Valate, IIM Visakhapatnam

When I was in my 3rd year of engineering, I got into a project of developing Formula Racing vehicle for Formula Student racing Team “Stallion Motorsports” a team which I co-founded with the of some of my friends while in engineering. I was made CAD and CAE department head as I was one with knowledge of CAD tools like Catia and Solidworks. I did not have any prior knowledge of designing and manufacturing vehicle. So, what we did as a team was, we sat for consecutive two weeks reading books about racing vehicle development. Furthermore, I got inputs from seniors about designing and manufacturing who had prior knowledge about the same kind of vehicle development. I combined this knowledge with data from the event rule book, inputs from our professors and inputs from my fellow teammates about their departments like engine & transmission, steering, suspension, etc. and we designed and manufactured our “1.0” vehicle. It took us almost 16-18 hours of work a day for three months to designed and manufactured the vehicle. We raced in Formula Student Racing event SUPRA SAE India. Despite being new to the event and not knowing many facets of racing we got All India Rank 21 in the final event. For this event, we had to compete with so many deadlines from the organizing committee, workday and night on the workshop floor, had to work with financial constraints, solved many manufacturing problems and the college and university exams. However, we sailed through this and completed the event successfully.

This event gave me precious life lessons. The first lesson being I learned that if you work hard, it will always pay off. This event also taught me the value of working in a team and collaboration, which further helped me while working in teams for my further ventures.